Sometimes those of us covering the race can overstate the importance of a particular state to each candidate, but I think each candidate has won their absolutely must-win state, and we're heading into two more - Fred Thompson in South Carolina and Rudy Giuliani in Florida.

Rudy has a new ad in which he touts a National Catastrophe Fund to reduce insurance rates - with a lot of hurricane images in the background. (It's running in Florida, obviously.) A bit more detail (and I mean, a bit) can be found here.)

(Is this the Florida equivalent of Romney's I'll-get-the-feds-to-spend-$20-billion-to-save-the-auto industry plan?)

Rudy's also running radio ads in Spanish.

This morning one of my Smart Washington Guys told me, "Know who the most powerful guy at the 2008 GOP convention is going to be? Rudy Guiliani. None of the candidates are going to have a majority, and Rudy is going to have just enough delegates to put one candidate or another over the top."

Wonder if Deroy Murdock and the CFG and National Review will be blasting Rudy for pandering like they did Romney, or will blast Rudy for an expensive bit of big-government pandering. Imagine if this was Huckabee!

EXCERPT A group of Israelis has launched a grass-roots effort to get people living in the Jewish state who are eligible to vote in the United States to line up behind Rudy Giuliani, it was reported yesterday. The group, Giuliani Supporters in Israel, was launched by Mordechai Twersky, a onetime candidate for state Assembly in The Bronx in the early 1990s, according the Jerusalem Post. Twersky has established a Web site, giulianisupportersinisrael.org, with background information including Giuliani's famed eviction of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat from a Lincoln Center concert in 1995.

"I did this as a private personal initiative, as a proud American and Israeli citizen, and I am confident that it will catch on," Twersky told the paper. He said the campaign hadn't set up his group, but that he's been in contact with Team Giuliani since he got started. Giuliani has historically been popular with Jewish voters, and took a hard pro-Israel line when he was in office. Giuliani's campaign didn't return The Post's calls for comment. In some past elections, planeloads of Israelis with American citizenship have flown to the United States to vote.

Former mayor Rudolph Giuliani sued all the way up to the Supreme Court to defend the citys sanctuary policy against a 1996 federal law decreeing that cities could not prohibit their employees from cooperating with the INS. When advisors cautioned against it, "Oh yeah?" responded Giuliani, "just watch me. " The INS, Rooty claimed, with what turned out to be grotesque irony, only aims to terrorize people. Though he lost in court, he remained defiant to the end.

On September 5, 2001, Giuliani's handpicked charter-revision committee ruled that New York could still require that its employees keep immigration information confidential to preserve trust between immigrants and government. Six days later on 9/11 several visa-overstayers participated in the most devastating attack on the city, and the country, in history.

New York conveniently forgot the 1996 federal ban on sanctuary laws until a gang of five Mexicansfour of them illegalabducted and brutally raped a 42-year-old mother of two near some railroad tracks in Queens. The NYPD had already arrested three of the illegal aliens numerous times for such crimes as assault, attempted robbery, criminal trespass, illegal gun possession, and drug offenses. The NYPD had never notified the INS.

CONCLUSION Rooty doesn't govern----he "rules" like a tinhorn dictator. Rooty's sole concern was his political ambitions----to suckup to illegals fraudulently registered to voter. Rooty's trampling the US Constitution and ignoring the US Rule Of Law is so typical of the discredited 1940's-era utilitarian doctrine: "the ends justify the means."

13
posted on 01/16/2008 12:36:25 PM PST
by Liz
(Rooty's not getting my guns or the name of my hairdresser.)

This morning one of my Smart Washington Guys told me, "Know who the most powerful guy at the 2008 GOP convention is going to be? Rudy Guiliani. None of the candidates are going to have a majority, and Rudy is going to have just enough delegates to put one candidate or another over the top."

Chaos (with some strategic big government pandering) is the ONLY conceivable way that a liberal like Giuliani could possibly be nominated.

But that very chaos within the Republican Party is what will make a liberal like him totally unelectable!!

15
posted on 01/16/2008 1:04:07 PM PST
by stockstrader
(We need a conservative who will UNITE the Party, not a liberal who will DEMORALIZE it!)

This morning one of my Smart Washington Guys told me, "Know who the most powerful guy at the 2008 GOP convention is going to be? Rudy Guiliani. None of the candidates are going to have a majority, and Rudy is going to have just enough delegates to put one candidate or another over the top."

Why would Rudy have enough delegates to put anyone over the top? After he loses Florida he'll lose NY and NJ as well and last I checked zero delegates won't help anyone.

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.